The Hemingway Cookbook (12 page)

THE MENU

Lunch with Ernest Walsh

Marennes
Tournedos with Sauce Béarnaise
French-fried Potatoes
Wines
Pouilly-Fuissé with the marennes
Châteauneuf du Pape
with the steak

Tournedos with Sauce Béarnaise

I figured the butter would be good for him.
²⁵

4
SERVINGS

For the Beef

2 tablespoons butter

4 slices fillet of beef, ¾ inch thick

4 slices white bread

For the Béarnaise Sauce

3 egg yolks

1 tablespoon heavy cream

½ teaspoon salt

Dash of cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar

4 tablespoons butter, in small pieces

1 tablespoon chopped tarragon

1 teaspoon chopped chervil

Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a small skillet. Brown the beef slices well on both sides, with the meat still rare in the middle (this dish caters to Ernest’s taste for rarely cooked meat; it should never be cooked well done). Cut the bread into large croutons the same size as the tournedos. In a clean pan, saute the croutons in the remaining tablespoon of butter until they are golden brown. Place one tournedo on each crouton and serve with bearnaise sauce.

To make the sauce: Bring 2 inches of water to a simmer in the bottom of a double boiler. Combine the egg yolks, cream, salt, cayenne pepper, and vinegar in the top of the double boiler and whisk together. Place over the bottom half of the double boiler. Whisking constantly, add the butter, a little at a time. Whisk until the butter is melted and the sauce is thickened. Add the herbs. Pour the sauce over the tournedos.

French-fried Potatoes
(Pommes de Terre Frites)

4
SERVINGS

4 medium potatoes

4 cups vegetable oil

Salt and pepper

Wash, peel, and cut the potatoes into strips of ¼- to ½-inch thickness. Place the strips in a bowl of cold water until ready for frying. Pour the oil into a deep fryer. If you do not have a deep fryer, use a large saucepan and a wire basket to hold the potatoes. You may also simply place the potatoes in the oil and remove with a slotted spoon, but a wire basket makes the process much easier. Heat the oil to approximately 350° F. Dry the potatoes completely and gently lower them into the oil. Fry until just before the potatoes turn golden, about 10 minutes. Remove the potatoes and drain. Heat the oil to the smoking point, replace the potatoes, and fry until golden brown and crisp, 8-10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

On the Road with F. Scott Fitzgerald

The first time I ever met Scott Fitzgerald a very strange thing happened.
²⁶

Legend has it that Hemingway first met Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar in Paris in the spring of 1925. Fitzgerald, already famous, ordered champagne, lavished Ernest with praise for his Nick Adams stories from
in our time
, asked Ernest if he slept with his wife before marriage, and passed out. It was not the last time that Scott would praise Hemingway’s work. Scott’s lobbying eventually helped ensure Ernest’s contract with Scribner’s for the publications of
The Torrents of Spring
and
The Sun Also Rises
the following year. It was also not the last time Scott would pass out from drink in Hemingway’s company.

Shortly after their initial meeting, Scott asked Ernest to accompany him down to Lyon to pick up the car that he and his wife, Zelda, had been forced to abandon due to bad weather. Hemingway, eager to see the beautiful springtime country, and having drunk again with Fitzgerald and seen none of the “… chemical changes in Scott that would turn him into a fool,”
²⁷
agreed to go along.

After missing his train and abandoning Hemingway in Lyon for the night, Scott finally found Ernest the next morning, and they began their journey home. Ernest had already shrugged off the inconveniences of traveling with Scott so far and could only laugh in bemused astonishment to discover the reason why the Fitzgeralds were held up in Lyon in the first place. The car’s top had been damaged in Marseilles, and Zelda, who detested car tops, had it cut away. So, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, with a picnic lunch from the hotel, departed for Paris in their Renault permanent convertible. They traveled about an hour before they were halted by rain, and continued the eating and drinking they began earlier that morning:

In that day we were halted by rain possibly ten times. They were passing showers and some of them were longer than others. If we had waterproof coats it would have been pleasant enough to drive in that spring rain. As it was we sought the shelter of trees or halted at cafes alongside the road. We had a marvelous lunch from the hotel at Lyon, an excellent truffled roast chicken, delicious bread, and white Macon wine and Scott was very happy when we drank the white Maconnais at each of our stops.
²⁸

Truffle-Roasted Chicken
(Poularde Truffée]

3
TO
4
SERVINGS

For this dish, we will simply follow the recipe for roasted chicken that appears on page
73
with one rather expensive exception. The day before roasting, gently loosen the skin on the breast and on each leg. Slide 3 thin slices of black truffle between each breast and the skin, and one slice between the leg meat and the skin. Refrigerate the bird for 24 hours to allow the chicken to take on the flavor of the truffles. Then proceed with the normal roasting recipe
.

Later that afternoon, Scott’s hypochondria kicked in and he developed a dread fear of dying of congestion of the lungs. They stopped for the night, tended to Scott’s illness with aspirin and whiskey sours, and had another strange meal together.

After Ernest’s and Scott’s clothes dried, they retired to the hotel dining room and began their meal with snails and a carafe of Fleurie. Shortly after the snails were served, the telephone call to Zelda that Scott had placed earlier finally went through, and he left the table for an hour. Hemingway felt obliged to finish Scott’s snails, “dipping up the butter, garlic, and parsley sauce with broken bits of bread …”
²⁹

Given the likelihood that Ernest and Scott sought refuge in Burgundy, these snails are served in the classic manner of the region, stuffed with butter, shallots, and garlic and served piping hot. One can hardly blame Ernest for finishing Scott’s snails before they turned too cold.

Burgundy Snails
(Escargots à la Bourguignonne)

Ernest loved to eat snails for the rest of his life. Forrest MacMullen, a close friend from Ketchum, Idaho, recalled preparing “gourmet snails” with Ernests last wife, Mary, when he couldn’t join Ernest down country hunting. He fondly remembers when Ernest would return from the hunt and “inhale two or three racks of snails’.”

While you may want to prepare this dish using live snails, for practical purposes I prefer to start with the canned snails that come packaged with their shells. What you sacrifice in flavor you make up in availability. The elegance of this dish may easily be retained in its presentation
.

2
TO
3
SERVINGS
(
OR 1, SHOULD THE OTHERS LEAVE THE TABLE FOR A WHILE
)

1 can
escargots
(18 snails), with empty shells

6 tablespoons butter, softened

4 shallots, minced

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1½ tablespoons minced fresh parsley

½ teaspoon salt

Black pepper

Preheat the oven to 425° F
.

Wash the snail shells thoroughly. Drain the liquid from the snails.

Cream together the butter, shallots, garlic, parsley, and salt and pepper to taste with a fork or wooden spoon. Place a small dollop of this snail butter into each shell. Add a snail to each shell, then seal the opening of the shell with more butter.

Ideally the snails should be baked in metal snail dishes, which have small indentations to nest each snail, opened side up. Alternately, you may bake the snails on a baking pan so that the snails rest against each other and will not roll over. Or, you may fill a baking pan halfway with salt and rest the snails securely in the pan (although you do lose any butter runoff this way). The goal here is to retain as much of the snail butter as possible. Bake the snails for 4-5 minutes, or until very hot and bubbling. Serve immediately with plenty of bread for soaking up the snail butter.

Serving Note:
In a fine restaurant, along with the snail dishes,
escargots
would be served with a snail-shaped clamp and small two-pronged forks. You may substitute any small tongs and seafood forks. Quite frankly, feel free to use whatever works.

Poularde de Bresse

We had eaten very good cold chicken at noon but this was still famous chicken country, so we had
poularde de Bresse
and a bottle of Montagny, a light, pleasant white wine of the neighborhood.
³⁰

Bresse
is the ancient term for the region surrounding Lyon, and it remains famous for the outstanding quality of its chickens and capons. A
poularde
is a roasting hen or capon weighing between 3½ and 5 pounds. The two ingredients most commonly associated with
poularde de Bresse
are truffles and morels. We have already experienced the splendor of truffle-roasted chicken. For chicken with morels, we will saute the chicken parts and top them with a sauce of these delicious mushrooms. This recipe is adapted from Suzane Rodriguez-Hunter’s wonderful historical cookbook of Paris in the 1920s
, Found Meals of the Lost Generation.

4
SERVINGS

1 5-pound
poularde
, or finest quality chicken, cut into pieces

½ cup flour, for dredging, plus 1 teaspoon

6 tablespoons butter

1½ teaspoons fresh lemon juice

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup water

1 pound fresh morels, or 3 ounces dried

1 shallot, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

3 tablespoons chicken stock

¼ cup tomato purée

1 tablespoon chopped parsley, plus extra for garnish

Pepper

Note:
If you are using fresh morels, carefully brush the furrowed caps of the mushrooms to remove any sand. If you have dried morels, brush them to remove sand, then reconstitute covered with hot water and a few tablespoons of brandy.

Rinse the chicken and pat dry with a paper towel. Dredge in flour, then place on a cooling rack to dry for 10 minutes.

In a large skillet, melt 4 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat until bubbling but not brown. Lower the heat and add the chicken (this may be done in two batches if necessary). Brown the chicken on all sides. Cover and allow the chicken to cook, turning occasionally, over low heat while you prepare the mushrooms.

In a small saucepan, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add the lemon juice, salt, and water and bring to a simmer. Lower the heat and add the morels. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is almost gone.

When the chicken is nearly done, remove to a platter and keep warm. Return the skillet to medium heat. Add the shallots and garlic and sauté for one minute. Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in the
remaining teaspoon of flour. Add the morels and any juice, the chicken stock, and tomato puree. Return the skillet to low heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Return the chicken in the sauce and simmer for another 10 minutes, or until done. Place the chicken on a serving platter, pour the morels and sauce over, and garnish with a little chopped fresh parsley.

Scott hardly touched the chicken or the wine, for the day’s drinking, the travel, and the “illness” had taken their toll:

He passed out at the table with his head on his hands. It was natural and there was no theater about it and it even looked as though he were careful not to spill nor break things.
³¹

A few days after their return, Scott brought Ernest a copy of his new book,
The Great Gatsby
. Hemingway was duly impressed and vowed to look after Scott more thoroughly than he had during their journey from Lyon.

Winter in Austria

We went to Schruns in the Vorarlberg in Austria. After going through Switzerland you came to the Austrian frontier at Feldkirch. The train went through Liechtenstein and stopped at Bludenz where there was a small branch line that ran along a pebbly trout river through a valley of farms and forest to Schruns, which was a sunny market town with sawmills, stores, inns and a good, year-around hotel called the Taube where we lived.
³²